Going green: Architect grad turns over a new leaf as a project manager
Posted on Monday, June 4th, 2018
Four years ago, Jaiveer Singh Bawa had a newly minted degree in architecture, his own firm, and was busy designing luxury homes in northern India. “But it wasn’t driving my passion,” he recalls.
Bawa had written his undergrad thesis on sustainable architecture, and couldn’t get the challenges it presented out of his head. “I came to the realization … that if we continue to live the way we are living, for our future generations to sustain themselves, we would actually need two-and-a-half planet Earths. This really drove my determination to look deeper into topics like ecological footprints and carbon neutrality and … to research more on sustainable living and sustainable architecture.”
Algonquin College, halfway around the world, was the perfect place to pursue his passion, Bawa soon realized.
“I got to know that the western world was quite ahead in its sustainability aspects and I started looking for courses across North America. The only one that really suited the needs of what I wanted to do was the Green Architecture course at Algonquin College in Canada.
“The course … has given me opportunities to work on very significant projects across Canada. Just being a part of those projects helps me grow.”
Bawa is an architect and project manager for the national firm Architecture49. Inc, working on one of the most prestigious and significant restoration projects Canada has ever undertaken. (The project has yet to be officially announced so it cannot yet be named.)
“It is a dream project for me, a life-changing one, and I’m extremely proud of being a part of it.”
The Green Architecture program is an intensive one-year program for students who already have a background in architecture and engineering but want to learn more about materials and methods designed to provide sustainable energy conservation improvements, reduce reliance on fossil fuels, and harness the energy resources of the sun, wind, and water.
For Bawa, it was also a crash course in western construction techniques. Used to designing with mortar, brick, and cement block, he had to start over from scratch. “The whole idea of using insulation was new to me. We had no gypsum board; we had no wood framing back home in India. I had to relearn architecture, period.”
But Bawa didn’t stop with Green Architecture. “By the time I had finished my first (program). I had a trust in the faculty here. I felt I had grown a lot in this one year,” he says. He went on to take a graduate certificate program in Project Management.
“While design and architecture are my passion, project management and administration and leadership were my strengths. That course actually (nurtured) the project management skills in me and taught me how project management is an employable skill.”
Aside from finding the content that he wanted in Algonquin’s programs, Bawa also found the college’s welcoming atmosphere made the cultural gap of moving to Canada much easier. The cultural diversity in his program and on campus was an eye-opener, he says.
“I felt that I was part of the globe. There was a feeling of belonging in this institution,” he says.
Algonquin employs “a whole group of people devoted to making the experience of international students better,” he says. “I shouldn’t say that I did not have struggles, but I knew where to go to get the answers to my questions.”
“I also took (advantage of) the Arrival Services that Algonquin provides for international students. I was put up in a hotel. I was taken to my bank to set up accounts. I was given a place to stay for three nights. I had people buy me my first phone. It really helped me.”
Bawa says the best advice he got from his Algonquin professors could apply to any student at the college: take advantage of any opportunity to network and “do not be afraid to be curious.”
“There is a bucket of knowledge around you in this institution that you can explore and get answers from,” Bawa says. “And if you don’t ask the right questions, how are you going to get the answers that help you learn what you really are curious about?”